


Welcome to the club, kid

by Multisakublossom



Category: Naruto, 龍が如く | Ryuu ga Gotoku | Yakuza (Video Games)
Genre: Also ninja bullshit mixed in hurray, Among other stuff etc etc, And eye trauma, Gen, Majima bonding with children and trying his best to be a responsible adult, Sakura hates the thug life and wants to be stronger, Tags May Change, Typical Yakuza violence and goofy shenanigans, Warnings for death, another one of my stupid ideas are you really surprised, because Majima runs a cabaret club and Sakura just joined the one eye club, haha I’m clever, no ships in mind at the moment obviously, the title is a pun
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 09:55:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16741801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multisakublossom/pseuds/Multisakublossom
Summary: Being imprisoned by Gato and his men after team seven’s disastrous mission to wave country quickly cements Sakura’s hatred of gangsters. She hates them. She hates them and their fancy suits and their money hungry ways and their cruel personalities. She’s happy to escape their clutches, at least until she ends up in the care of another, even scarier gangster.Eh, oh well. The mad dog of Shimano isn’t so bad once you get to know him.





	Welcome to the club, kid

**Author's Note:**

> Title: Welcome to the club, kid  
> Ships: None at the moment!  
> Fandoms: Naruto X Yakuza 0 (and other Yakuza game series if I keep going!)  
> Chapter 1 word count: 8875
> 
> Wow. Another crossover. WHO WOULD’VE THOUGHT. But I bet a Yakuza/Naruto crossover of all things was definitely unexpected. It’s pretty stupid, I MUST ADMIT.
> 
> But hey, uh. I LOVE the Yakuza game series, Yakuza 0 in particular. Majima Goro is AMAZING in it. What a great, complicated, ridiculous, and amazing character. But like…I feel so bad for that lonely bastard. AND YOU KNOW WHAT I DO WITH LONELY CHARACTERS I LOVE?? I fucking throw the responsibility of parenthood at them, that’s what. Kids make everything better! Especially traumatized ninja kids! Lmao, have fun with that shit, bud.
> 
> I dunno man, I also love giving Sakura awesome parental figures, so I thought they’d be a fun duo. Plus, I just got hit with sudden and weird inspiration, and suddenly I was writing this long ass mess lmao. Have no idea where I’m going with it other then typical Yakuza game series shenanigans mixed with ninja bullshit and fun Majima and Sakura bonding. What a bunch of goofs. Just…please imagine Sakura learning how to fight from this nutjob. It’ll be great.
> 
> So anyways, here goes this nonsense. Heads up, this first chapter is fucking LONG and BRUTAL. Sakura does NOT have a good time being Gato’s captive. Warnings for beatings and eye trauma. Nothing sexual though, I promise it won’t delve into that territory. I really wanted to end it with Majima and Sakura actually meeting, so I kept writing until I got to that point. Please don’t expect all the chapters to be this long if I keep writing this story.

Sakura was not trained for this.

Getting ambushed by the Demon of the mist and then subsequently captured by a tyrannical businessman was _not_ covered in any of her academy lessons. And it certainly wasn’t anything she was expecting from what was supposed to be a C-ranked mission.

She’d been told plenty in school on what to do if you were captured by enemy _shinobi,_ but never anything pertaining to a guy like Gato. He was not shinobi in any sense of the word. She’d thought it was ok, that it was similar enough and she could apply the same basic knowledge to her situation, but she couldn’t be farther from the truth. Besides, her lessons weren’t exactly helpful to _her._ They had all amounted to self-sacrifice over self-preservation, and they could be summed up as- _“no matter what you endure, do not give away any of Konoha’s secrets to your captor. To do so is traitorous and shameful.”_

Sakura….didn’t understand the weight of that until now. But when she sat in her cell, alone and afraid, she’d realized that no help was coming for her. She had thought…..that if something like this ever happened, god forbid, then she could just tough it out. She was not inclined to give away village secrets- _although she didn’t know anything particularly worthwhile anyways-_ and she figured that in a situation like this she could just keep her mouth shut until a rescue team came and praised her for her resilience.

How foolish.

These people didn’t even care for information.

They cared nothing for the innerworkings of the shinobi world, and their interest pertained only to money. They were _bandits._ Hired _thugs_. Just plain out _criminals_ and _gangsters._

Sakura was a shinobi- _if she could even call herself that anymore_ -and Gato and his men had no interest in shinobi. Therefore, she had nothing to give that would convince them she was worth keeping around.

Sakura had planned in the past, at least mentally, how a capture situation would possibly play out among shinobi. She imagined, with grim acceptance, that torture was an inevitability. She figured she could just…make up lies on the spot about her village to sooth her potential captors. Useless information that they could soak up, and in exchange, they’d go easy on her. She was a good liar, so she saw no faults with that old logic. She was a smart kid, and surely, she’d have the last laugh.

That idealized scenario was falling apart at the seams.

These people just…. _didn’t care._

They were….so very cruel.

Sakura didn’t know how long it had been since they’d all been captured, or even how long it’d been since Naruto and Sasuke had been taken from the cell adjacent to hers _and never returned,_ but the bastard guards had _just_ mockingly informed her that they’d sold her dear teammates off, and it made her want to punch and kick and cry and _scream._

And she did. God, _she did._

Kakashi-sensei tells her not to, and to stay quiet, but she yells and **yells** until one of the guards comes down and starts to nearly beat the life out of her.

Sakura has never been _beaten_ before. Her body and mind go into a panic as it happens, and all her self-defense knowledge goes out the window. Not that it would’ve helped, she’s too tired and hungry to put up a fight. All she can do is scream out useless fake information about her village, spurned on by the shinobi instincts that _screamed_ at her that this was an _interrogation,_ and not a senseless beatdown from an annoyed guard.

Pain is erupting on every inch of her body as she receives kick after kick, punch after punch. Near the end of it, she almost feels like she is floating. Her soul drifting in and out of her body aimlessly as everything else fades away. There’s a point where she can no longer hear her own pained cries, or Kakashi-sensei’s _enraged_ screams demanding that the perpetrator **_stop._** Even the ringing in her ears disappears in place of empty silence.  
  


* * *

 

It is the pain that makes her wake up.

Her ears are **_burning._** White hot, invasive pain that outweighs even the pain of her previous beatdown.

Sakura cries frantically and squirms in desperation, mouthing wordless pleas until it all subsides to a dull, manageable throb, and she is able to register her surroundings.

She can hear again.

Kakashi-sensei is there, apologizing frantically in a cracked, broken tone of voice. She’s never heard him sound like that before. No matter how bad things got. Not even when Naruto and Sasuke were taken, and Kakashi was beaten to a near pulp when he tried to stop the guards from dragging the boys out of their cell.

The closest thing she’d ever heard to Kakashi and “frantic” was when she was screaming at the guards for _taking her boys_ and Kakashi was begging her to _stop._

Sakura understood why now. He knew her actions would warrant _this,_ and he was still too injured to defend her.

She felt so bad.

A wave of panic washes over her when she fully registered that Kakashi-sensei was _here_ and _not_ in his own cell. Had he’d broken out? Didn’t he know how much trouble he’d get in?

“Kakashi-sensei,” Sakura chokes out, trying to sit up.

He pushes her back down with a shush. “It’s ok. It’s ok, Sakura. They let me in here so I could help you. I need to focus now, so please hold still.”

Sakura then realized that her dear sensei was pouring _chakra of all things_ into her ears. Is that why it hurt so bad? Why was he still doing it? It hurt, hurt, **_hurt-_**

“I’m sorry,” Kakashi whispers. “I really shouldn’t be doing this….I have no talent for it. All I know of medical ninjutsu is what I’ve observed with the sharingan, and I don’t know nearly enough to properly reverse deafness. I’m sorry if it hurts, but please try to bear with it.”

 _Medical ninjutsu? That’s what he was doing? And did he say that she was **deaf** just a moment ago? _Sakura thought to herself in shock. She was….horrified at the prospect of losing her hearing for good, and she was so grateful that her sensei knew how to reverse it that she couldn’t even be mad at him for doing it badly. She could take the pain if it meant being able to hear again.

“It’s ok. I’m ok, Kakashi-sensei. Thank you.” She chokes out.

Kakashi’s one visible eye widens with shock at her response before a look of relief settles over his face, infinitely grateful that he didn’t fuck this up, and apparently he did well enough that she can at least hear somewhat.

The relief doesn’t last long, because in the next second, the guard monitoring the situation with impatience reaches down and wrenches the copy-nin up by the arm. “That’s enough. The little fuck is fine.” The cruel man hisses out.

Kakashi’s chest throbs with anger when his student’s body _spasms_ at the sudden loss of healing chakra that he was coursing through her system a moment ago. “She **_isn’t_** fine,” Kakashi hisses back with twice as much venom, “I’m not done-”

“Well _I_ say you’re done. The brat will live.” The man- _Sakura dimly recognizes as the one who beat her-_ growls and starts to pull her weakened sensei away to return him to his cell. Sakura resists the childish urge to reach out weakly in desperation for her teacher.

“I haven’t finished fixing her other injuries yet!” Kakashi yells hatefully, _desperately._ Unable to keep his anger and worry contained.

The horrible, _horrible_ man smacks her poor sensei in the face, making his neck snap to side with a crack. Sakura would scream in rage if she didn’t think it would earn her another beating.

The man tells her sensei that he _doesn’t care_ if she lives or not, and that is when Sakura sees the usually composed Kakashi Hatake _snap._

Her poor, weak, emancipated, and chakra drained sensei lashes out and grabs the horrible man by the throat, and starts to _squeeze._

It’s one of the more _real_ deaths she’s seen. Not the most brutal, by any means- _poor Haku earned that honor-_ but the visceral anger and desperation that fuels the next few moments makes her shake in terror.

It isn’t a murder worthy of being committed by a shinobi, especially one her sensei’s caliber. It lacks all the trained grace and finesse a man like Kakashi is typically known for. This is anger. Revenge. A need to fight and _survive_ in its rawest form.

Sakura can’t look away.

The two men tumble and try to gain the upper hand over the other. The guard struggles to break free and jabs punch after punch into Kakashi’s abdomen, while Kakashi grunts and shakes in pain at each blow and _squeezes tighter._

Sakura whimpers at the sight of the guard gasping for air, face turning blue and eyeballs bulging. How long can a person go without air? How much longer until he’s dead? _God, why won’t it just end already and **why** can’t she look away?_

She gets that her sensei likely doesn’t have enough chakra left to kill him with a quick and easy jutsu- _hell, she doesn’t even know how he had enough left to heal her as much as he did-_ but why can’t he just….snap the mans neck or something and be done with it? Why is he drawing it out?

Sakura lifts her head up just enough to see the expression on her sensei’s face. Her blood runs cold.

She’s….never seen such a _terrifying_ expression before.

Kakashi was forced to give up his mask- _although he was still allowed an eye patch-_ when they first got captured. The children of team seven were too horrified by their situation to be delighted by the fact that they could finally see what their sensei’s face looked like.

Sakura wishes in this moment, that her sensei had kept the mask.

The snarl on his face looks downright _inhuman._ His teeth are grit in an unfathomable rage and his one eye is wide, the pupil almost a pinprick in size. The man looks manic. _Utterly insane._

Then he starts mumbling to himself, and Sakura almost wishes she had remained deaf.

_“You fucker…you disgusting, despicable, son of a **bitch**. You think you can just tear my team apart? Fucking….all over again? You think you can just hurt one of my precious students **and get away with it**? I’ll kill you. Ill fucking kill you, you **scum-** “_

Sakura covers her ears, not wanting to hear any more. The tears welling up in her eyes is what finally gives her the strength to look away. She knows now why her sensei didn’t opt to just snap the man’s neck. That would’ve been too fast. _He’s drawing it out on **purpose.**_

Sakura knows that maybe she should feel some sick satisfaction in the man’s suffering, after what he did to her. But she’s a twelve year old girl, and she’s too small, and too scared, to hold that kind of rage in her tiny, little body. All she can muster up is a feeling of actual sickness. She feels like she’s going to throw up. Is this what it means to be a shinobi? Or is this just what it means to be a _human?_

She doesn’t know how long she waits, but when she feels a light, hesitant touch on her shoulder, she can’t help but flinch.

“Sakura, it’s me. We have to go, ok? We have to get out. Can you stand? Can you do that?” Kakashi-sensei’s voice sounds normal and comforting again- _although she hardly feels comforted-_ and the prospect of escape sounds so delightful that she throws away her hesitation and nods desperately.

When Sakura goes to stand however, she immediately collapses, pain rocketing through her small frame. Her injuries are too severe for her to move, let alone stand. “K-Kakashi-sensei, I-I…I c-can’t-” She whimpers pathetically, hoping to god that her sensei won’t abandon her.

Kakashi flinches. “I don’t have enough strength to carry you out.”

Sakura nearly starts begging at that, certain that he’s going to leave her- _oh god, he’s going to leave her to **die.**_

Instead, he leans down and starts to make his hands glow again. It hurts just as much as it did before. She doesn’t understand how it can hurt even as she sees her injuries fade. It’s painful, but Kakashi explains what he’s doing as best as he can while also apologizing for the discomfort he’s causing her, and that makes it a little better. Medical ninjutsu sounds incredibly interesting, and Sakura asks in a weak, but optimistic voice if he will teach it to her when they escape.

Kakashi does that closed eyed smile he used to do before all this happened- _it looks weird without the mask, but it still makes her heart ache with fondness and nostalgia. She misses her team **so** much_-but it looks strained. Like he’s hiding something even as he reassures her.

“Maa, I’m teaching you right now, aren’t I?” He tries to joke even as his breathing starts to become difficult at the amount of chakra that he’s using- _chakra that he really doesn’t even have. He’s scraping at the bottom of an empty barrel, but he still has to keep going, because even if he collapses, he’ll make sure Sakura **will** survive. _He does a damn good job hiding his exhaustion from his favorite- _at this point, his only_ -student.

“Yeah. Finally.” Sakura grins cheekily and jokes back with a morbid snort. She flinches with regret right after the words are uttered. Now is _not_ the time to be petty. She tries to take it back, but her sensei cuts her off.

“No. You’re right. I….should’ve taught you kids better. Prepared you for something like this.” Kakashi’s voice is breaking again, filled with immeasurable regret. “I’m sorry. It’s my job to protect you. To train you. I failed at both of those things.”

“Kakashi-sensei, I…I-I didn’t m-mean….I’m sorry, it’s m-my fault too, so don’t-”

“That’s why,” he cuts her off again, “After this, I want you to find a new person to guide you.”

Sakura flounders, mouth sputtering for words. “S-Sensei, I-I can’t-! Y-You’re-”

“Unfit to be a teacher.” Kakashi finishes for her. He offers a weak hearted, but playful smile. “Besides, if you really want to learn medical ninjutsu _properly,_ then I’m the last person you should be taking lessons from. Unless you _want_ everyone you heal to be in pain.” He chuckles, and Sakura gives him a watery smile.

“Well, maybe I do!” She huffs. Kakashi laughs. She doesn’t catch the way his voice falters at the end of the sound. Sakura’s injuries are almost reduced to mere cuts and bruises- _bad cuts and bruises, but still just cuts and bruises. No internal bleeding or ruptures or breaks or-_ and Kakashi is running past empty. It’s pure determination that keeps him from dropping. God, his poor student’s injuries were so _bad-_

“Sensei?” Sakura questions.

Kakashi freezes, worried he’s been caught and now he’ll have to convince his worried and terrified student to flee without him and leave him to die because there’s no way he’s getting out of here and-

“When I find someone to teach me medical ninjutsu, will you at least come visit?” She asks weakly, voice scratchy and on the brim of tears.

Kakashi Hatake’s old, withered, black hole of a heart _breaks._ He promises without thinking. “Of course I will, Sakura.”

Sakura smiles at him, and he finally pulls his shaking hands away, the glow sputtering out into nothing. He gave all he had to give. Sakura is still wobbly, still hurt, but he prays what he’s done will be enough to let her escape with her life. He feels the effects of chakra exhaustion hit him like a wave, and he’s ready to lay down and die, make up some lie so that Sakura will run- _convinced that he’s right behind her, and he will follow-_ but when she takes his hand and peers out cautiously into the hallway, Kakashi feels he can’t die just _yet._

Just a little longer. He can hold onto life just a little longer.

He’d be a real scumbag if he abandoned his student _now._

When Sakura pulls him into the hallway, he’s grateful because his vision has gone so dark he couldn’t possibly traverse the hideout without someone to guide him.

Just till they get outside. He can hold on. Just until they get outside. Maybe he can even summon Pakkun to help her before his life is snuffed out like a flame. It’s optimistic, and Kakashi is not known for optimism, but he’s too dizzy at the moment to be a pessimist. Maybe he can show Sakura how to summon Pakkun and she can do it instead, since he doesn’t have the chakra for it.

He can do it.

He can hold on.  
  


* * *

 

To Kakashi’s credit, he holds onto life a shocking seven minutes after being drained of all the chakra in his body. In those seven minutes, they have managed to get to the main floor. How, Kakashi doesn’t know. During those seven minutes, he is numb, practically blind, and his mouth feels so full of cotton that he can’t utter a word. His body is moving so sluggishly that Sakura has to practically drag him. It’s no use hiding his condition to her at this point, but it’s no use explaining it either because he lacks the capacity to do so. He is dying in every sense of the word.

Sakura is terrified and confused, but not so much that she can’t tell what’s happening to her sensei. She has to choke back sobs so they aren’t caught, and it’s so hard because she knows there’s no way they’re both getting out of this. She can’t even be mad that he lied to her. She’s still just scared.

“Sensei,” Sakura whimpers, “s-stay awake. _Please_. We’re almost there.”

She doesn’t get any kind of response that indicates he’s aware of her speaking to him. He just breathes short, ragged breaths.

God, she doesn’t want him to die. She doesn’t want to lose him. She doesn’t want to be alone.

Sakura refuses to abandon her sensei and has taken to letting him lean all of his weight on her as she moves forward towards an unguarded exit. That’s the one good thing about these guys being bandits. In comparison, a shinobi guard would never do such a piss poor job. Makes it easier to escape.

Almost there.

_Almost there._

Sakura feels the weight leaning against her suddenly give.

Kakashi finally collapses. His body falls limp against her side and she is dragged down by his weight and to the floor with a loud _thud._

Sakura can’t help the sudden, alarmed wail that tears itself from her throat as she watches the light drain from her sensei’s eye. _“Kakashi-sensei!”_

Apparently, there _were_ a few guards nearby, because they are alerted by the noise, and within a few seconds she is surrounded.

She begs them to go away, to not come any closer. She holds her dying teacher and _pleads. “_ P-Please! Please, god, just let us go! We’re not worth a-anything! You don’t even need us to be here! Please, please, _please-!”_

Sakura’s nonsensical cries fall on deaf ears, and one of the five men approaching grabs her by the hair and _pulls._ She lets out a scream. He slaps her. She wails and struggles, but she doesn’t turn _vicious_ until she sees one of them _kick_ her sensei’s motionless body.

_That horrible man is on the bridge. Fancy suit. Laughing. Kicking poor Haku’s dead body and Zabuza is crying and Sasuke-kun won’t get up. Kakashi-sensei is hurt **bad.** Naruto is so angry that he runs towards the man with a violent scream and she and Kakashi-sensei yell at him to come back, but-_

The memory is enough for her to lose it. Sakura wonders what she must look like as she screams and digs her teeth into the hand restraining her so violently that it sinks in deep and draws blood.

She must look insane.

Sakura thinks of the guard that was strangled to death and wonders what Kakashi-sensei was remembering when he did it.

She yells loud, angry, empty threats. _“Don’t touch him! Don’t you touch him! Don’t you **dare** touch my sensei, you assholes! I won’t let you! I won’t let you get away with it! I’ll kill you! I’ll fucking kill you! Give him back! **Give back my team you** **SCUM** -!”_

She is quickly silenced.

One of them pins her to the ground and squeezes her throat _-just like that man, oh god, oh god she doesn’t want to die like he did, oh god-_ until her voice shifts from screams to chokes. Sakura nearly passes out, black spots swarming her vision, when her attacker loosens his grip.

Everything is fuzzy. Even though she can breathe again, she knows she is not safe. When her surroundings start to come back into focus, she sees the five angry guards again, all sporting bitemarks and scratches. _Did she do that?_ She wonders. She can’t remember.

They’re cursing at her, she thinks, saying things she doesn’t understand. She hopes she isn’t deaf again.

The one holding her down slaps her again, and the pain restores her senses.

Oh. Oh, she can still hear. That’s-that’s good. Awesome, really. Yay.

The one she bit the worst is calling her a bitch.

Sakura lets out a giddy, weak little laugh. He must think she’s laughing at him, because his nostrils flare with rage, and he wordlessly pulls out a knife and hands it to the man pinning her.

She stops laughing when she sees it.

“You think you’re tough shit or something, kid?” He growls from above her, showing off the sheen of the blade to her.

Sakura whimpers and trembles in response, shaking her head in a frantic ‘no’ and unable to form words. The knife isn’t even very big, nothing like the size of Zabuza’s sword. She feels like such a weakling for shaking so badly at the sight of it.

He ignores her fear and smirks cruelly, drawing the knife closer. “You really give that much of a shit about your stupid fucking sensei? You wanna be tough like him?”

Sakura did, she really did, but she failed to understand why he was asking. The words aren’t friendly, _obviously,_ and she doesn’t know what point he’s trying to make, but the implications terrify her. She just wants him to get off and take that knife away from her face.

“Well,” the cruel man chuckles, “If you wanna be tough, you gotta _look_ tough.” The other men seem to get what he’s saying, because they’re chuckling too as he gestures to a scar on the side of his forehead. “See this? We all got scars like this. Your _precious_ sensei’s got a particularly _nasty_ one too, doesn’t he?”

Sakura freezes and breaks into a cold sweat, wide eyes trained on the blade resting on her cheek, right below her left eye. The man laughs at her, and orders one of the other men to _‘hold the silver haired bastard up for him,’_ so he could get a ‘ _reference as he worked.’_

The one she bit the worst does so with a smirk, dragging Kakashi’s body behind her and then fisting a hand into his hair, so he can lift his head up to be eye level with her and the man looming over her.

Sakura starts crying big, fat tears, and the man coos meanly and mockingly, _“oh no, no, don’t do that! The tears will make it sting worse! Haha!”_

Having her sensei this close makes her panic even worse, even if he isn’t awake and can’t see how pathetic she is. Sakura resists the urge to beg him to save her. She can’t help but think of his frightening rage back in the cells, the way he _snapped_ , and wonders if he _does_ wake up and sees this happening, _then-_

The point of the knife digs into her lower left cheek and draws blood.

Sakura spasms in shock and pain, and _screams._ The other men come and help hold her down as the knife drags _deep_ and up her cheek, slowly, _slowly, **slowly** -hurts, hurts, **HURTS**_ -

She screams her throat raw as blood drips down her face and into her mouth. The man was right, the tears _are_ making it sting worse.

_It hurts so bad! Stop! Please **stop**!_

It feels like it takes years, even though he only cuts a few inches from the near bottom of her cheek to right below her left eye. Right when Sakura thinks it’s over, he lifts the knife and replaces it an inch above her left eyebrow and then drags **_down_** -

“Can’t forget the top, now can I?” He laughs jovially.

Sakura pants as the pain and panic makes her go into shock. She isn’t even screaming anymore. Just waiting for it to be over. She lets out a single sob as the knife passes over her eyebrow and that’s it. It’s over.

Or so she thinks.

He’s raising the knife up and pointing its tip directly down. “Oho, you thought we were done, huh? Kid, you forgot the best part!”

Bile wells up in her throat. She doesn’t make a sound. This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening, oh god, _oh god, this can’t be happening-_

“If you thought _that_ shit hurt, then you’re in for a _big_ surprise.”

_He’s going to stab her eye out._

Sakura’s immediate thought, as irrational as it is, is to insist that Kakashi-sensei isn’t _really_ missing his left eye-as if that would make them stop. They-they were trying to make her match, right? It wouldn’t be matching if they knew Kakashi-sensei actually _did_ have an eye under his patch, so maybe-

Her shinobi instincts choose this very unfortunate instant to kick in again and remind her that Kakashi’s left eye is the _sharingan_ , and to spill that secret would make her a traitor. _Interrogation, this is an interrogation and she has to keep quiet, she can’t say anything, she can’t-_

_“No matter what you endure, do not give away any of Konoha’s secrets to your captor. To do so is traitorous and shameful.”_

Sakura keeps silent. Her muscles relax, and her body goes numb and slack and still as she instinctively prepares herself for the worst pain of her life. The man frowns and mocks her when he sees the fight leave her. Then he laughs again, certain she’ll go back to screaming in no time.

To his credit, he’s right.

She’s fighting against every nerve in her body as the knife lowers, brain screaming at herself to _move._ To _fight._ When it’s seconds away from penetrating her pupil, she wins and summons the strength to do _something._

She lets out the loudest shriek she’s ever made, and thrusts chakra laden hands _up_ in a pushing motion.

The man flies off of her. She screams again a second later, this time in pain. She didn’t manage to do this and come out uninjured. He was too close, and the momentum of her push somehow changed the trajectory of his knife. Right as he flew off her body, she could feel the knife drag down again and _scrape against_ -

Sakura covers her left eye and _wails._

_There’s so much blood._

She screams and screams and _screams-_

_Oh god, her eye. Her eye. There’s so much blood on the left side of her face and she can’t see, and he took her **eye** -_

The man that did it is slammed against the wall after being flung off of her, and the other four are angrily approaching her screaming form as the fifth gets his bearings straight.

Sakura doesn’t notice them go to grab at her, but she does see a _blur_ suddenly jump into motion and charge at them.

_It’s Kakashi-sensei._

He’s wobbly, weak, half dead, and he doesn’t even fight. Just mindlessly tosses himself at her attackers, using his useless, unfocused, dying body as a human battering ram. Sakura watches in shock, her screaming forgotten and replaced with trembling. She gasps as one of the men drives a knife into her sensei’s shoulder, and it looks so painful that she can’t even be happy that he woke up to save her. His body must be numb from chakra exhaustion, because he doesn’t even flinch when the blade drives into him down to the hilt.

That, or she’s just incredibly weak in comparison when it came to pain.

Kakashi looks over his shoulder at her, and she tenses but she’s ready to do whatever he orders of her. She’ll fight. She’ll fight. _She’ll help him fight-_

He doesn’t tell her to fight. He yells out one, frantic, slurred word. It’s the last thing he’ll ever say to her. _“RUN!”_

Sakura doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want to, _but she does._ Her heart is screaming at her to not be scum, to not abandon her teacher, but her instincts have flared up again and taken over her body. She’s hurt. _She’s hurt, and she can’t win, and she was given a direct order-_

The next thing she knows she is outside. Her last view of her sensei and his glazed over eyes being left behind her. She runs and runs and runs.

Sakura doesn’t even delude herself into thinking that he’ll follow. He’s _dead._  
  


* * *

 

  
Sakura runs until she collapses and falls into the dirt. She fades in and out of consciousness for a little while, and her hands never leave their clamped position over her eye. It’s missing. It _must_ be. Why else would it hurt so bad? But if she holds her hands over it then maybe it’ll be ok, maybe it can be healed-

Kakashi-sensei knew medical ninjutsu.

He’s dead. He can’t heal her.

And he _sucked_ at it. And if someone as great and amazing as him sucked at something, then how can she possibly hope to be any better?

Sakura remembers his explanations back in the cell. About nervous systems, and repair, and chakra, and how extensive knowledge and delicate _control_ is needed. She cries, pained, as she warmly remembers him telling her how smart she is. How he praised her for having the best chakra control in the group.

Sakura summons everything she knows about eyes to the forefront of her mind. Everything she’s read. She’s read a lot, actually. She loved reading. Particularly about anatomy. She’d focused on eyes the most, thinking about Sasuke-kun and his pretty eyes, and how if she couldn’t learn about his sharingan- _the Uchiha tomes were heavily restricted_ -then she could at least learn about eyes in general.

She calculates about how much chakra she thinks would be needed for healing something as delicate as an eye, and then channels as little as possible into it.

Sakura screams as the pain increases ten-fold.

But she doesn’t stop. She keeps channeling chakra, trying whatever feels best until _something_ feels right. It still hurts, but is also feels….better? More correct? Like her eye isn’t sitting weird and damaged in her skull? It’s still there. Just damaged. It isn’t damaged anymore. She fixed it.

Well, as best as she could anyways. She doesn’t know if she’ll actually be able to _see_ out of it.

Sakura thinks about healing her other injuries, but they aren’t so bad, and healing hurts, so she doesn’t try. A few bruises and cuts, and a stupid slash on her face isn’t going to kill her. Her old self would’ve been mortified at the damage done to her face, and would’ve screamed at her to fix it first.

Her old self is as dead as her sensei. As her whole team.

Sakura wonders if she should try fixing her ears too. Kakashi-sensei made it so she could hear again, but she noticed that she doesn’t hear…well. Certainly not as well as she did before. She’d like to rectify that, but she doesn’t want to push her luck.

She drags herself off the ground and trudges forward into the foliage, unsure of what else to do. She doesn’t know how much time has passed, how far she is from Gato’s hideout, or even where she is and where she’s going. It hurts to walk, and she thinks she must’ve used up too much of her meager chakra reserves to fix her eye, because she feels very tired.

Even so, Sakura thinks she should’ve spared the time and energy to fix her hearing, because it’s so shitty that she doesn’t hear him sneak up on her until he’s right behind her.

“How unfortunate.” He sneers at her pathetic, limping form.

Sakura spins around in alarm, hands still clamped against her stinging eye despite the instinctive urge to reach for a kunai that she doesn’t have. The man is dressed in a weird black cloak with red clouds, and he’s wearing the strangest mask she’s ever seen.

“Kakashi-sensei’s mask was cooler.” Sakura slurs out without thinking, too woozy to register what or why she’s saying that.

He seems to take more notice of her after she says that though, and she swear she sees his eye narrow from underneath his mask. There’s only one hole for one eye. Is he missing the other one?

“ _What the hell is with having one eye lately_?” She mumbles angrily, losing more and more of her patience, energy, and overall coherence. The exhaustion and trauma are making her act weird and…goofy.

“H-Hey,” Sakura murmurs to the man, “Hey, one-eye. I-I…I can heal y’know? Just fixed my eye. All by myself. I did that. I, um….I can fix yours too if you want…? I mean….it might hurt, cause’ I _suck-_ but if I fix it, can you go away? Or better yet, can you point me in the right direction…? I gotta get home, and I have no idea where the hell I’m going.”

He ignores her mindless rant- _although she notices an odd change in him when she mentions she can heal_ -and asks in a gruff voice, “Where is Kakashi?”

Sakura narrows her good eye at him angrily and sways tiredly. “Hey _asshole_ , I’m offering to fix your eye. You gonna help me or what?” She can tell that makes him angry, but before he can say anything, she droops when she recognizes what he asked of her and loses her bravado. “Kakashi-sensei is dead.” She whispers sadly.

The man stills. He pauses for a moment, then starts to utter curses to himself. It sounds like he’s cursing either Kakashi, or cursing Kakashi for _dying._ Could be a mixture of both. “I thought as much.” The man mutters coldly, hand reaching up to brush against the left side of his mask. “ _It_ died out as well.”

Sakura doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and he continues speaking before she can ask. “Figures. The stupid bastard dies and leaves his student defenseless. Typical Kakashi, letting down everyone entrusted to him _._ ” He scoffs in disgust.

Sakura jumps to her sensei’s defense, the fog in her mind clearing enough for her to be reasonably and sensibly angry. “Don’t say that about my sensei! He tried! He _tried_ -!” She breaks down into tears. “H-He tried….he t-tried and now he’s _dead_ and I d-didn’t do a _thing_!”

The man seems unfazed by her sadness as she falls in on herself, but inwardly, he’s a little at war with himself. He hasn’t…felt anything, since Rin died. This is the first time he’s felt a semblance of sadness since then. Maybe it’s because of stupid Kakashi getting killed- _although, he’d never imagined or admit that something like that could upset him-_ or more likely, it’s because this tiny, little whelp reminds him of the girl he loved and lost.

She’s small. She’s sad and hurt and she can _heal_ , and _Kakashi failed her_.

It’s really all the resemblance he needs to make a stupid decision that’s driven by a brief tinge of emotion.

“Well,” he starts in a monotone tone, “you’d better do _something_ now. Because I can hear your captors coming this way.”

Sakura’s head shoots up in alarm, her good eye wide with horror. She can’t ask the man to help her, because he’s already gone when she looks up. There’s a kunai left where he was standing.

She scrambles forward and grabs it without hesitation, and then hides behind a nearby tree and waits.

She has no plan, and no time to think one up.

A few moments later, she can faintly hear her pursuers not too close by. _Or maybe they’re much closer_ , her traitorous, paranoid mind whispers. _Your ears aren’t exactly reliable at the moment._

The paranoia is strong enough that Sakura pokes her head out, just a bit, so she can see for herself. _Dummy._ Her mind hisses meanly _. Your eyes aren’t reliable either._

Turns out her hearing really does still suck shit, because they’re actually only a few feet away. Close enough to see her the second she looks out. Sakura makes blurry eye contact with one of them and freezes like a deer in headlights. ‘ _Fuck! Are you kidding me?!’_

She ducks back behind the tree, as useless as that is. She doesn’t need properly working ears or eyes to know she has seconds before they descend on her. She uses what little chakra she has left and starts to form some seals. When they round the tree trunk with fists raised, they are unknowingly about to attack a clone.

The real Sakura hides in a bush nearby, and she creeps forward and slashes at the ankles of the man closest to her, right as one of them kicks her clone and it vanishes in a puff of smoke. The man she cuts yells and falls, unable to pick himself back up. He isn’t dead, but with that muscle cut, he’ll be down for the count and Sakura won’t have to worry about him again.

Her next attack isn’t as clean. She lunges forward and manages to stab another man deep in his calf. It isn’t what she was aiming for, because he was in the process of turning around, but he’s down too. Only three more left.

Sakura doesn’t get the chance to attack another, because she is sent tumbling with a fierce kick to the stomach. She rolls across the dirt and gags, stomach clenching in pain as vomit fills her mouth. She’s surprised that she’s only vomiting _now_ , after all the pain she’s endured today, but she doesn’t complain when the three men back off a few feet in disgust as she barfs on their feet.

“You-! Ugh-!” It’s mister _‘tried to stab her eye out’_ that says that, cringing away from the fluid she’s expelling.

Sakura would laugh if it wouldn’t make her choke on the bile in the throat. ‘ _Really? You can stomach stabbing a little girl’s eye out, but not when she throws up on your shoes? Fucking pussy.’_

The guy she bit deeply on the hand earlier recovers first and goes to attack, but he clearly isn’t expecting her to have any fight left in her. His mistake, because the second he’s close enough, she digs her kunai deep into that same teeth mark ridden hand. He backs away with a pained shout, grasping his injured hand with his good one. Sakura leaps to her feet and backs away as well, brandishing her kunai and searching for another opening to attack.

Mister stabby eye and the other guy both pull out their own knives while their three friends continue to writhe in pain behind them.

Sakura is so dizzy. She blinks away the black spots in her good eye, licks away the blood crusting by her mouth- _there’s still so much wet, sticky, red on her face. Feels gross-_ and swallows down the remaining taste of vomit. She is so gross right now. Oddly enough, it’s the cold sweat glistening over her skin that feels the most disconcerting to her. Kakashi-sensei broke out into a cold sweat right before he keeled over from chakra exhaustion, so she knows that fate isn’t far off for herself.

It’s the anger she feels at the thought of surviving these guys, only to die from overexertion, that makes her fix her stance and force her shaking knees to work. She does so just in time for the two men to jump at her and slash blindly.

Sakura slashes back, parrying their attacks sometimes, and receiving cuts that she was too slow to dodge other times. She ducks away from outstretched hands reaching for her and cuts any extremity she can reach. They get angrier and angrier and she gets slower and slower-

She is seized from behind by the man she stabbed in the hand, and her arms are quickly grabbed and pinned to her sides. She wasn’t expecting the surprise attack, and she doesn’t have the strength to break free. Before she has a chance to do _anything_ , mister stabby eye delivers a mean right hook into her cheek and the force of it sends her to the ground.

Sakura is nearly knocked out by the power behind his fist. If he was less tired, then she’s sure he would’ve hit her strongly enough to make her lose consciousness before she hit the dirt.

The three men reach down for her- _seriously, why haven’t they had enough of this yet? Why can’t they just leave her **alone**?-_and instinct makes her summon chakra to her hands and thrust them out in defense just like she did when mister stabby eye had her pinned.

She hits _someone,_ and doesn’t bother checking to see who before she sprints away. It dawned on her like an epiphany when she got punched, that she didn’t actually _have_ to stick around and fight these guys. _She could just climb a goddamn tree and wait them out, for fucks sake. Why the hell hadn’t she thought to do that before?_

Sakura sways dizzily all over the place as she runs, and because she’s nearly blacking out, she runs face first into the tree she was making a break for. Her nose smarts from the impact, but she doesn’t hesitate to place her chakra laden feet on the bark and move up the trunk. She moves up fast, and she can hear the men yell at her angrily from down below.

She’d feel more triumphant if she could see where she was going.

She needs to stop. She needs to. She’s seconds from dropping, and because her vision is so fuzzy, she can’t see where the branches are. If she could, she could sit down on one and rest. Get her bearings straight. She _thinks_ she sees one through the haze, and she takes a wild leap of faith, flinging herself towards it and reaching to grab it and haul herself to safety.

She miscalculated by inches. She feels her fingertips brush against the wood pointlessly, before gravity takes a hold of her and pulls her back down to the earth.

She just can’t catch a break today, can she?

It’s almost funny, how easily Sakura accepts that luck just isn’t on her side, and this is a thing that just may as well happen.

It isn’t funny anymore after her back slams against the ground and the impact makes pain rocket up her spine.

Sakura feels maybe two seconds of horrible, paralyzing agony- _she must’ve fallen at least fifteen to twenty feet-_ before she passes out. Finally.

The three men approach with little sympathy and stare down blankly at her corpse-like form. The other two men among them would laugh, if they weren’t still struggling to stand and desperately trying to avoid bleeding out from their leg injuries. They just offer up cruel sneers when they see the reason for their wounds fall to what they presume to be her death.

“Think the little bitch is dead?” Mister stabby eye spits.

Mister mutilated hand kicks her in the ribs and watches her body twitch reflexively. “Nope.” He replies.

He’s thinking that it’s a good thing, that they can still have some fun torturing the brat for all the trouble she’s put them through, when something makes his muscles seize up. He can’t move.

Mister stabby eye grunts in alarm, also feelings the effects of paralysis. “W-What the fuck?!”

“I think that’s quite enough.” A deep, dark voice says from behind them.

The man in the mask is standing there, his eye swirling underneath the cover and spinning a paralysis genjutsu. Obito wasn’t planning on intervening, to be honest. He was originally just going to give the girl a tool and wait, watching expectantly to see if she had the wits to survive on her own. He eyes the kunai, still gripped in her hand even as she lays motionless. Apparently, a single blade was not enough.

He shouldn’t care. He shouldn’t. He doesn’t have a heart left to care with. He should just leave the girl to her fate. If she is too weak, then that is no problem of his.

But that’s just the thing. She is _too_ weak. Far weaker then _any_ shinobi has any business being, and every second he watched her struggle made him burn in silent rage.

_What had Kakashi been doing?_

_The girl should know better._

_Did he even **try**?_

The fact that she reminds him of Rin does not help. Because all he can think of is _her_ , being failed by his stupid old teammate. Did Kakashi fail Rin in the same way he failed his poor student?

He sees this tiny girl get tossed around and envisions the girl he loves **_suffering_** _, desperate to survive_ -

He won’t watch anymore, for that reason alone.

 _‘I’ll save your student. Consider this my final favor to you, you fool.’_ Obito thinks as he makes the decision to rescue this girl’s life.

His eye swirls, and he’s ready to transport the girl to the gates of Konoha using his Kamui. It’s a little extra, but if he’s going to save her, he might as well go all the way. Stopping a few bandits from killing her isn’t going to prevent her from dying later on her desperate meander home.

Then he thinks for a brief moment, that if he’s following that logic, what’s even the point in returning her home? Konoha cannot keep its children safe. None of the nations can. This is fact. His endeavors are ultimately pointless, because no matter what, this child will die.

Obito pushes the thought aside, because it’s not as if he would ever consider taking this child under his wing. There’s no good place for her, so Konoha will just have to do.

But something changes enough in his thoughts, that when he uses the Kamui- _something goes wrong._

He can create a portal leading to any spot he envisions with his sharingan, but there is no spot he can imagine that would keep this child safe from the harm of a shinobi lifestyle.

_It’s as if his sharingan is acting on its own, ready to prove him **wrong**._

_‘What is this? What’s happening?’_ Obito thinks in alarm as a portal appears, colored far differently than any he’s ever formed before. It looks strange. It feels strange. Everything is wrong and different and for some reason, _he can’t stop it._

The spot where his left sharingan used to be burns and hums.

Before he can do anything else, the girl is gone, along with the three bandits that had been standing over her. The two still on the ground are shouting in fear. The sound annoys Obito, who is already frustrated at having control over his own technique stolen from him.

As soon as the control returns, he increases the genjutsu holding the two in place until every frozen muscle in their body tenses so hard they _burst._

They die in a splatter of red, imploded from the inside out.

Obito hums in mild surprise. Odd. He’s never done something like that with a minor genjutsu before. Maybe it’s because they were so weak.

_Or maybe it’s because he’s unlocked a new level of the sharingan._

He doesn’t know _how,_ but it would explain the oddity that occurred moments ago. He wonders where the girl was sent, and would like to check, but he’ll need a few minutes before he can use Kamui again.

How strange. He doesn’t _feel_ like he’s unlocked a new sharingan level. And how could that girl possibly have elicited a strong enough response to awaken a new stage anyways?

The left side of his face hums again, and he curses.

There are many possible reasons as to why this happened, and he’s sure he’ll get the answer in time.

_But it better not be Kakashi’s fault._

Even in death, he is a meddlesome fool.  
  


* * *

 

When Sakura starts to wake, it’s with the dull throb that she’s been steadily growing used to. Everything hurts. But in a way, that’s good, because it means she’s alive. She knows she passed out before, and if she’s waking up now, it means that those men didn’t kill her.

She highly doubts it’s because they had a last-minute change of heart, so she rolls over _-her back screams in protest-_ and starts to drag herself to a nearby wall.

Wall?

She starts to hyperventilate, thinking she’s back underground, back in the cell, but a quick cursory glance reveals that she’s in some kind of alleyway, like the ones back home.

Sakura doesn’t dare to hope that she _is_ back home, lest she be faced with more crushing disappointment. Instead she just idly wonders where the hell she is as she crawls to the closest wall and uses it as leverage to pull herself to her feet.

“Where did the trees go….?” She slurs aloud to herself. Actually…she could pass on trees for a while. She’d never climb a tree again. Not after that shit.

Sakura shuffles forward, pressing her whole weight into the wall and vertically dragging herself towards the alleyway’s opening. She hopes there’s people out there. Nice people. Nice people that will help her. She can’t see well at all, so while she can see the way out of the alley, she can’t see the street past it. Her depth perception is way off, but she _thinks_ there are people. She thinks she sees figures moving about and bright lights-

There’s a groan from behind her.

She freezes, and jerkily turns her head to see three _unfortunately familiar_ men waking up on the ground way in the back of the alley.

Sakura doesn’t wait for them to notice her. She shuffles as fast as she can for the exit. Help. She needs help, **now**.

Her foot knocks against a can when she’s about five feet to freedom. She curses and increases her speed as one of the men behind her yells, _“Oi! That fucking brat is on the move!”_ God, they’re persistent.

She’s close enough that she can see people now. It’s still a little blurry, so she clasps her hands over her bad eye again so she can get a better view with her good one. It helps. She zeroes in on the pedestrians walking around, ready to alert them of her presence. She doesn’t care that they are dressed weird and the street is unfamiliar. As long as they help her, she doesn’t care. She opens her mouth to yell out to them, and all that comes out is a pitiful squeak.

 _“H-help…”_ Sakura whimpers softly as she topples forward into the street.

Maybe her luck has changed, because she bumps right into someone passing by. He catches her instinctively as she falls forward.

“W-Woah! What the hell-” He starts to say, before choking on his own words.

She can imagine why. She must look like a _mess._ She can’t bring herself to care at all, because the man is big, and his arms are firm, so he’s clearly strong. Strong enough to save her, if he’s really that worried about her.

Sakura weakly looks up, wanting to see his face- _and give him the most convincing puppy dog eyes ever so he’s more inclined to help_ -before she possibly blacks out again. Her blood covered face presses flush against his chest, staring up at him.

Her hands are still clasped over her bad eye, and her one good eye looks up at-

_-at **his** one good eye….?_

Sakura doesn’t even have the strength to muster up a dumbfounded expression. Which is fine, because he seems to have that covered. His eye is wide, his jaw is dropped- _he looks absolutely horrified at the sight of her._

God damnit. _He’s wearing a fucking **eyepatch.**_

She wants to say something witty before she passes out, something like _“hey, fellow cyclops,”_ or _“two rights don’t make a left,”_ because- _hey! They’re **both** missing their left eyes! What a coincidence._

Instead she just groans unintelligibly and goes limp in his arms, her last conscious thought being, _‘Seriously, what the **hell** is with having one eye lately?’_

**Author's Note:**

> Well, that sucks. Sorry Sakura. She’s having a rough day. Really got put through the ringer.
> 
> To clarify, she still HAS her eye. It didn’t get gouged out, just punctured. Sat all…gross and ruptured in her socket until she fixed it. But like, she can’t really SEE out of it. She didn’t fix herself of blindness, just kind of…stopped herself from losing it completely and dying from the trauma. I was originally gonna make her lose it, but an injury that intense would be too difficult to work with and would reasonably involve a hospital visit. Which aint gonna happen. Sorry, girl.
> 
> Anyways she’s very messed up the moment, and that’s why she’s being so…darkly comedic to cope with it. Hey! She’s like Majima, already! And they haven’t even met yet. You can really see the family resemblance, lmao. To be fair, I’d be annoyed by all these cyclopses too. We got four one eyes in one chapter. What, is it a trend? Some kind of bargain sale? Jesus.
> 
> As for Obito’s “making a portal to another dimension” bullshit…..well, that will be explained later. But don’t expect something like….that actually makes sense. It’s just dumb plot shit, haha. (I wanted Sakura to keep her ninja skills, and the fact that her parents are in another universe makes it harder for Majima to put her in someone else’s care. Sorry man, you’re stuck with that kid for the long haul.)
> 
> And Kakashi….well don’t get your hopes up if you’re thinking he’s still alive. I can assure you that’s almost assuredly not gonna happen. Guy’s gone. Rest in peace man.
> 
> Well, this note’s too damn long. Please look forward to the next chapter, where Majima will rightfully beat the ever-loving crap out of those assholes that hurt Sakura.


End file.
